A Poor Woman's Pocketbook
by Mike Litrel, M.D.

"Are you crazy!!?" I cried. "A hundred dollars every month!!? We already have clothing!" A lively discussion ensued. In retrospect, everything she said was correct, and everything I said was stupid. But I ended my argument in an immature fashion by calling Ann "a spendthrift."

Ann was crushed. She had never thought of herself that way before. Descended from a long line of upright Scottish Presbyterians, she held herself to high standards, cultivating all qualities of high moral character. Extravagance was not acceptable.

I knew Ann was not a spendthrift. I had only called her that to win the argument. That should have been obvious to anyone. But even as a young inexperienced husband, I was smart enough to know I had just made a big mistake. I had hurt Ann's feelings and made her doubt herself. An argument just for fun had turned into something not fun at all.

I also recognized that in this case a simple apology would not be enough. At some level, this accusation would haunt Ann for a long while, and I would never be able to convince her of its unfounded nature. So I let my next words rise to another level, a level well beyond apology.

I lied.

For the next twenty minutes, in an intricate manner that suggested both confusion and stupidity, I convinced Ann I had thought being "a spendthrift" and "being thrifty" were the exact same thing. At the end of this speech I pulled out the dictionary to prove my point and was amazed 1 no, shocked 1 to discover that "spendthrift" and "thrifty" were antonyms, not synonyms. Afterward, I took Ann out to dinner and to a movie, and as far as I knew, all was forgotten.

But then two decades later what appears in my office, but the most decrepit pocketbook in all of Cherokee County.

Ann had been chatting away with my nurse Danielle. She returned to my office smiling innocently, unaware of my guilty discovery. We had had a lunch date which had slipped my mind. Somewhere in the middle of the meal I casually broached the subject of a new pocketbook.

"This one is fine," she reassured me.

I think that's what I admire most about Ann. She isn't much concerned with possessions and the status they might confer. She thinks instead about what she wants to do, and who she wants to become. I hope this is passed on to my children, that they come to realize we find health and fulfillment not in acquisition of belongings 1 but in becoming the person God intends us to be.

All that spiritual stuff aside, a few weeks later I took Ann to dinner at Phipps Plaza, where we coincidentally "happened" to pass the Coach store. It didn't take too much arm twisting to get Ann to pick out a new bag. But when I saw the price tag of the one she had chosen, I was miffed all over again at my spendthrift wife.

This time, however, I kept my mouth shut.

Dr. Litrel is an obstetrician/gynecologist in private practice with Cherokee Women's Health Specialists in Canton and Towne Lake, and is a Clinical Professor at Emory Medical School. His book on faith and health is called The Eyes Don't See What the Mind Don't Know, is available at www.doctor-mike.net. Dr. Litrel lives in Towne Lake with his wife Ann and their two sons, Tyler and Joseph. E-mail: mikelitrel@comcast.net

Into the lives of most men comes a point when we learn the tacit rule: Never rummage through a woman's pocketbook. I'm not certain exactly why this is taboo, but it is a hard and fast rule. Such rules, on rare occasion, must be broken. But you'd better have a good reason for doing so. Or be very careful not to get caught.

Recently I was confronted with such a scenario when I returned to my office after a morning of seeing patients; I discovered a pocketbook sitting next to my desk. A patient must have left it. But who?

There are not many things, I suppose, kept private between a patient and her gynecologist. But my fear is that those last remaining things are kept secreted away in her pocketbook. So when I picked it up, I felt an awkward hesitation.

It was an old pocketbook, a decade at least. A ratty worn pocketbook you might find thrown away unsold at the end of a garage sale. Obviously, it belonged to one of my indigent patients. We volunteer to see pregnant patients without insurance at the health department, and six weeks after delivery they come to our office for a post partum visit. In my mind's eye I could see a young, poor woman, her arms full carrying a helpless newborn and overflowing diaper bag, arriving at the bus stop to discover she had no change for the bus fare.

Thus taboo was thrust aside, and I looked inside the pocketbook for the name of the owner. The wallet, I was surprised to see, was literally overflowing with credit cards. For an indigent person, the owner of this pocketbook certainly had quite a line of credit.

I was doubly surprised to find that the name stamped on every one of the credit cards was "Ann Litrel." The ratty pocketbook belonged to my wife!

A wave of guilt washed over me. Ann has never been an extravagant person. But early in our marriage almost twenty years ago I accused her of exactly that. We were just newlyweds, working on our budget. Ann had allotted one hundred dollars a month to wardrobe, haircuts, and various shadowy cosmetic products in a category she called "Clothing."